Scotty Haskell

Those Girls!: . . . You Two! Scotty Haskell

It was l928 and the nation's economy was about to take a nose dive. In spite of feverish activity on Wall Street, warning tremors quivered on the east coast, but had yet to signal their presence in the tiny hamlet of Pine, Oregon, population 300 or so. It would be a year before  Pine and two of its most dedicated, self-appointed, town-surveillant residents would  feel the repercussions of the Great Depression. Meantime, life went on: It's still the era of  horse and buggy with few cars and trucks. Allyson Brown, 8 and Evelyn Wynton, 9, are well-intended innocents. Supremely confident of their practical solutions to every problem they encounter and using their own singular methods of manipulating  people and events, they have a habit of producing sometimes startling results. From the sizzling marcel Hair-Do for Ally's four year old cousin to a Matchmaking between a visually challenged maiden-lady and her deaf-as-a-post bachelor neighbor because the girls believed he could see for her and she could hear for him. Perfect, yes? No. On a mountain excursion they surprise their nearly unclothed preacher and his similarly nearly-unclothed organist, planning a "total immersion" baptism in a mountain pool. The "total 'mersion babtism" captures the girls' fancy. They decide to approach the preacher's wife to schedule the same rite the organist was to experience. Without even trying, they become involved in anelopement between feuding families. Gypsies invade their town and steal from one of their favorite storekeepers. The girls are appalled and seek to recover the items. Unknowingly they expose a favorite uncle's double double-entry bookkeeping methods at the local bank. Through it all Ally and Evvie never lose their aplomb, or doubt for a minute that they've done the right thing. Their instincts are correct, but......oh, my.